FRANK ZAFIRO - CHISOLM'S DEBT (2013)

 

Synopsis/blurb....

After two tours in Vietnam and 25 years as a police officer, Thomas Chisolm is looking forward to a quiet retirement. That hope is quickly shattered when Mai, a ghost from his past, finds him and demands justice for the horrors she suffered during the Vietnam War...horrors Chisolm couldn't save her from. Now Chisolm must find the man responsible and bring him to justice to repay an old debt and in the hopes of putting his own demons to rest...once and for all. 

Chisolm's Debt is written by River City author Frank Zafiro and features one of River City's most iconic characters. Follow Chisolm on his search as he explores the nature of moral debt, war, forgiveness, and guilt on his way to an explosive ending.

Way back when, before I discovered the joys of crime fiction, I was a massive reader of all things related to the Vietnam War, both fact and fiction. Reading a book which was a blend of both was for me then a double win.

Chisolm's Debt serves up a dual time narrative, with newly retired police officer Frank Chisolm featuring both back in the 70s as a grunt in Vietnam and in near present day as he is emotionally blackmailed into tracking down a fellow US veteran responsible for the rape of a young Vietnamese woman. 

I thought the re-emergence of the same woman, Mai from Chisolm's past, the one he tried his best to save but failed was a slight stretch for me plot-wise, but that said I really enjoyed the story.

The scenes set in Vietnam were tense and troubling ....... young men - barely men, thrust into an alien environment and landscape, trying their best to survive, some thrive, some become dehumanised and view everything and everyone as an enemy to be conquered. Friendship, loyalty, trust, camaraderie, bravery, duty, loss, a sense of right, contrasts with savagery, barbarism, cruelty, rape, entitlement, and a total abandonment of decency.

In the early 2010s we have the reconnection between Chisolm and Mai and Chisolm's subsequent search for the rapist veteran. This part of the narrative was enjoyable also. I liked the way Chisolm went about his task, utilising organisations with access to information on former serving members of the armed forces. I liked the less than straightforward path to his target, with some interesting events and diversions which this threw up.

Inevitably we get to a confrontation between Chisolm and the guilty man. It's less of a surprise to learn that time has not improved the demeanour or outlook of the rapist. He's a miserable, embittered man with little or no redeeming qualities. There's a skewed sense of pride in his boasting of showing his victim probably the best time of her life. 

Events take a further twist and reinforce the portrayal thus far of Chisolm's character as a decent man, brave, tenacious and determined; one imbued with a strong sense of right and wrong. Again, there's a wee suspension of disbelief as Chisolm, a man in his 60s belies his age to perform some physical feats way beyond the ken of most normal beings half his age.

Overall though, I really liked it.

4 from 5

Frank Zafiro's books have been enjoyed before, In the Shadow of El Paso and The Hardest Hit (a YA novel as Frank Scalise) and a couple of his co-authored works with Colin Conway - Charlie 316 and Never the Crime. He's one of my best reading discoveries of 2020.

Read - (listened to) October, 2020

Published - 2013

Page count - 230 (4 hrs 7 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

BRIAN KEENE - ALONE (2011)

 

Synopsis/blurb....

When Daniel Miller wakes up one morning, something has gone terribly wrong. The power is out. The phones are dead. The house is silent. The street is shrouded in fog. Both his partner and their adopted daughter are missing. So are their neighbors. And so is everyone else in the world. Daniel Miller is the last person left on Earth... or is he?

From award-winning, best-selling horror writer Brian Keene comes this quiet, chilling, supernatural short tale.

A slow-burner of a long short story.

A man wakes alone in his bed and irritation and annoyance at his partner for not waking him, soon turns to puzzlement - the house is empty, the power is out, the cell phone doesn't work, he can't pee. This puzzlement escalates to fear and despair over the next few days - or is it days? How can he tell? The clocks have stopped. His food has no taste. The neighbours are missing. Dropped things make no noise. 

A hopeful encounter with his adopted daughter sows further confusion, as he can't connect with her. Eventually all is revealed through a conversation with a neighbour's troubled child.

I really enjoyed this one, maybe because it was so different from my staple reading preferences of the past 30 years or so. I don't honestly know whether I tried to solve the mystery of what was happening or whether I didn't bother to try, just content to follow Daniel's efforts to discover what had happened to him and the world he knew. What sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare he had woken from?

In hindsight the ending was all so obvious and fitting.

Great writing, an interesting story, one with ever-increasing tension as Daniel learns his fate.

4 from 5

I've a couple more from Brian Keene in the Audible library which I will look forward to in future.

Read - October, 2020

Published - 2011

Page count - 54 (1 hr 20 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

BILL CRIDER - A TIME FOR HANGING (1989)

 

Synopsis/blurb....

Lizzie Randall, the preacher's daughter, is murdered. The men of the west Texas town are set on lynching Paco Morales, a Mexican teenager who happened to be in the vicinity at the time. No proof, but, after all, he is only a Mexican. Reason and/or conscience work on most of the would-be lynchers, so that, in the end justice is served. The list of suspects grows to include almost everyone in the story, thus providing an agreeable tangle of clues.

A really enjoyable book this one, the best I've read (or if you like, had read to me) this month so far.

A dead girl and an obvious scapegoat - a 15yr Mexican kid, a mob mentality, a beating - a prelude to a hanging, a weak sheriff, a dead father, an unpunished card cheat, a preacher with a secret past and a disturbed mind, the town drunk, a pregnancy, a kill or cure doctor, a little man with a chip on both shoulders and an axe to grind, a fiance who can't keep it in his pants, his would be wife with a temper and a rifle, a sheriff's deputy with scars and no stomach for more killing, a rich businessman doing his civic duty, the Mexican kid's mother - a widow with a strong urge to keep her son alive and a long memory or how the law failed her husband, a barkeep easily led and some other assorted townsfolks and witnesses.

Crider mixes up a heady brew, with a decent cast of characters, and an incendiary situation. Racism, mob mentality and a face off between the few that stand for reason and justice and the enraged with the ropes. 

There are a lot of secrets uncovered as the book progresses and the possibilites increase as to the killer's identity. These get eliminated one by one, until there's only one that remains. Bill Crider does keep the pot boiling though, I thought we had the one, but actually at that point we had two.

Cracking, and a reminder that I should read more Western genre fiction than I currently do - after all it's crime fiction with hats and horses.

4.5 from 5

Bill Crider's work has been enjoyed before - Outrage at Blanco and a short piece Piano Man.

Read - (listened to) October, 2020

Published - 1989

Page count - 175 (5 hrs 41 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible 

BRIAN LANDERS - AWAKENING OF SPIES (2020)

 

Synopsis/blurb.....

A richly detailed, and deeply engrossing espionage thriller. Brian Landers is the real deal.'-- Andrew Raymond, author of the Novak and Mitchell thrillers

Thomas Dylan is an unlikely spy.

Rejected by MI6 he joins the Ministry of Defence where his first mission is a total failure. Unexpectedly he is then sent to Rio de Janeiro to recover a submarine interrogator stolen from the US Navy.

In Brazil he discovers that those supposedly on his side, MI6 and the CIA, have their own priorities and his life is not one of them.

A murderous game which began with the death of a British spy in Argentina is being played out in a city of sun, sea and secret police. When he comes face-to-face with the brutal realities of Brazil's military dictatorship Dylan has to trust somebody. But who?

He knows for sure that the woman he wants to trust has been lying to him from the very beginning. But why?

This is a fast-paced thriller in the vein of John le Carré and Eric Ambler.

Awakening of Spies is the first in a four book series featuring Thomas Dylan. The book is set in the early 70s and has Dylan, a novice British agent globetrotting in an effort to avoid an important piece of marine technology falling into the wrong hands after it has been pinched from the US Navy and hawked on the black market.

Dylan is an unlikely candidate for the task he has been set, something he himself seems only too aware of. Fairly new to the Ministry of Defence, he is already cute enough to understand the internal politics of the department and its sometimes spikey relationship with its counterparts in M16. Intelligence and savvy is one thing, lack of field experience is another.

Firstly, events in The Netherlands turn sour. Dylan acquits himself well, but the main ojective isn't met. Off to the States and again defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory, which had me (and Thomas) puzzling as to why he was then Brazil bound. By the end of the book all becomes clear, to the both of us.

I like the time frame of the book and the depiction of early 70s Brazil, where the vast portion of the novel takes place. Dylan gets a first hand view of the corruption and brutality elements of the police will go to. Brazil isn't a democracy. Rio and the surrounding countryside is, in this book anyway a hot-bed of spies, assassins, dodgy cops, foreign agents, gun dealers, bomb makers and other assorted miscreants. 

In Rio he has the assistance and experience of the local Brit on the ground to fall back on, but there's always the sense that he's slightly out of his depth, that people aren't being straight with him and that he's always a half-step behind. People check up on him, use false names, and avoid giving direct answers to his questions - and that's just his own side.

I liked the mini dramas and incidents. I liked how Dylan conducted himself and adapted quickly to the ever changing circumstances. There's also a bit of spice and potential romance with a female operative, Julie, who works closely with our man during phases of the drama - always assuming they can trust each other enough to move things on. 

I did have a bit of a hard time keeping track of everybody in the book, as the author introduces a lot of players during the course of the narrative. That said the book does tie up nicely in the end with answers to all the questions I had.

An interesting book and one I enjoyed with more to like than take issue with. I'd be keen to read the next book in the series - Family of Spies.

4 from 5

Read - October, 2020

Published - 2020

Page count - 275

Source - review copy recevied from publisher RedDoor Press

Format - ePUB file read on laptop

SHAWN WILSON - RELENTLESS (2019)

 

Synopsis/blurb.....

Cherry blossom season is Washington, D.C.'s most beautiful time of the year. But as tourists flock to the city, this year's festivities are marred by the discovery of the naked body of a young woman floating in the Tidal Basin. Veteran homicide detective Brian (Brick) Kavanagh is assigned to the case. He's shocked when he learns the victim is connected to another homicide which makes the investigation very personal for him. Brick's efforts to solve the case are thwarted by departmental politics and a rush to judgment. Convinced that justice has not been served and the wrong person is in jail, Kavanagh risks all to relentlessly pursue the truth. Overlooked evidence ultimately leads to a devastating conclusion in a heartbreaking case.

Relentless was another book enjoyed via Audible. It starts out as a standard police procedural, with Washington detective, Brick Kavanagh along with his partner investigating the death of a young woman found in water. The victim's brother who was known to Brick also turns up the victim of another homicide. The direction the case seems to take, indicates it's in relation to a people smuggling ring and there's some overlap with a Hispanic gang. A man is arrested, confesses and is charged.

The book takes an interesting turn then, with Kavanagh, after a bust up with a fellow a-hole cop and a dressing down and suspension from his boss, turns in his gun and badge. Concerned that the man who confessed to the crime is getting railroaded, Kavanagh offers his investigative services gratis to the man's attractive female lawyer. 

I quite liked the twisted tale that the author spun here, with a few different story strands and supporting characters helping the give the book some flesh on the bones...... a young pregnant girl with a wayward husband and fears for her future, an Irish bar owner trying to do the right thing, Brick's cop partner Ron and the Vietnamese defence lawyer.

I was convinced by Kavanagh's sense of right and wrong and his pursuit of justice. I like that he surrounded himself by friends who felt similarly. An outlook that judges people as individuals rather than bracketing them as minorities of different ethnicities is always a positive.

There's a decent setting, a reasonable pace, an interesting main character with some family back story and an exciting climax, though it's one that comes a bit out of left field. 

More to like than dislike and I would be interested in seeing what the author does next with the main character in a future book. That's the benchmark of enjoyment from me - would I want to spend more time with the author's writing and Kavanagh? On this occasion, probably yes.

3.5 from 5     

Relentless is a debut novel from author Shawn Wilson.

Read - (listened to) October, 2020

Published - 2019

Page count - 288 (7 hrs 39 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

I did have a copy courtesy of Net Galley, which unfortunately didn't survive the death of the last laptop.

DAVE PEDNEAU - NIGHT, WINTER, AND DEATH (1990)

 

Synopsis/blurb.....

Night

The town of Yocum Valley is in for the longest, darkest night it has ever known. A night that will make some doubt their sanity, and others fear for their lives. A night when the heinous curse of its tainted ancestry will rise, in the form of a living horror, to seek savage vengeance....

Winter

The beast will stalk during the coldest, cruelest winter on record, in a place that is frozen, snowbound...and trapped at the mercy of something unspeakable, with a taste for human flesh and a thirst for human blood....

Death

It’s waiting in the cold and dark to strike, again and again. And the terrified, disbelieving citizens are about to find themselves under siege - by something partly human partly animal...and completely deadly.

I suppose I could claim to be getting into the spirit of Halloween with this novel of a werewolf legend coming to life, but in truth I'm not a massive fan of the celebration. It existed when I was growing up, but it always felt a bit American and a bit faked, but only in the context of being an imported celebration. I did enjoy the book though, maybe a bit more than I expected to. I was reminded of reading Richard Laymon, way back before I discovered crime fiction, not that I could put my hand on heart and say Laymon ever penned a werewolf book.

Small town setting, remote, isolated, cut off when the weather is bad and obviously it gets bad here, the death of the oldest resident and the reactivation of the curse, which sees the unburied man biting nice guy, ex-cop, security man Ernie. Ernie then morphs into a werewolf and terrorises the town.

Simple plot as such, but I enjoyed the focus on the townsfolk, in particular, Ernie's niece, the young police chief, the kid reporter and the local author. A lot of the drama focuses on finding out more about the legend, concerns over Ernie and his health before he goes full-blown werewolf, investigating the murders, worrying about a pregnant wife, fighting off the unwelcome attentions of the town mayor who seems to think he can co-erce sex from Ernie's niece (name escapes me) who is also a teacher, a horny woman running an old folk's home and grabbing sex with the young employee and lots more.

It's a busy book, which as it progresses gets faster and wilder as the tension mounts. I think Pedneau might have had fun writing it. I hope so because I had fun reading the thing. I think the characters made the book ... their interactions, the conflicts, the sex, the legend backstory, the school scenes, the teenage lovers, the morphing and the escalation, with widespread panic, leading to vigilantism and mob fear.

Parking my realism/credibilty meter at the door, before entering this one, it was quite satisfying.

4 from 5

Dave Pedneau has been enjoyed before - A.P.B.

Read - (listened to) October, 2020

Published - 1990

Page count - 288
(10 hrs 46 mins)

Source - Audible purchase

Format - Audible

 

BILL PRONZINI - GUN IN CHEEK (1982)

 

Synopsis/blurb... 

Love mystery? Then you'll love this book. Hate mystery? Then YOU'LL love this book. Pronzini is a fount of information about the "best" (read: hilariously inept) in mystery fiction. He's read every book ever written in the genre, it seems, and shows genuine affection for the form. The fun he pokes at the authors and their works is gentle and doesn't distract at all from your wonderment at the fact that these books ever even existed. It might, however, make you want to seek them out and try for yourself. Or maybe it'll help prevent a misstep in purchasing a book you wouldn't end up enjoying. Either way, this book is worth a listen (or three). These mystery authors have gone unsung for too long.

An okay listen, but not a book that will live too long in the memory if I'm honest. I kind of hoped I'd be familiar with a lot of the examples Pronzini used to illustrate the best of the worst in the mystery genre but not really. 

There is a bit of a background on the history of the genre, as well as the spy story and also men's magazines of the 40s and afterwards, which was interesting.

Michael Avallone gets a mention several times - I've read his Shock Corridor years ago. Gladys Mitchell and Sax Rohmer get a bit of a slagging for the racism of their characters, which seemingly reflected their own world views. I've heard of Mitchell and read one Rohmer book - The Yellow Claw. I made a note of the racism towards the Chinese at the time, but it didn't especially jar with me.

Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer get a mention and a bit of a tease, but Pronzini concentrates more on his imitators. (Note to self, read Spillane.) Richard Stark's Parker character is similarly name checked for imitation by a now forgotten author with a character named Sand which kind of piqued my interest. It's unlikely though that I'll follow up on it.

Pronzini, bless him seems to have as much fun reading a bad book as he does a good one. I don't think I share his enthusiasm if I'm honest. A lot of authors mentioned were unfamiliar to me and despite his hoping people seek them out, I won't be following that piece of advice.

3 from 5

Bill Pronzini wrote a follow up to this one - Son of Gun in Cheek, which I think I have a copy of somewhere which I will get to sometime (maybe). 

Read - (listened to) October, 2020

Published - 1982

Page count - 272 (8 hrs 11 mins)

Source - Audible purchse

Format - Audible